


paraselene woman, i'm your man in the moon

by jokeperalta



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Dating, Developing Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Romantic Fluff, Season/Series 05, are there any more ways i can emphasise that this is fluffy nonsense of the highest order, endeavour morse loves joan thursday desperately
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 03:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17696681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: “You can take me out to dinner first,” she decides. “Then... we’ll see. Least that way I can be sure you’ve eaten today.”“When?“Tonight. Meet me here at eight.”She doesn’t pose it as a question anymore, and he’s glad. If it was a question, he could change his mind about this, talk himself out of what he really wants like he always does. She’s telling him, and he’d follow any order if she’s the one giving it.





	paraselene woman, i'm your man in the moon

**Author's Note:**

> hello again everyone!! long time, no see!! 
> 
> I started this... probably the day after the s5 finale aired (lol) but it got a little lost between other fandoms and finishing a masters and starting work full time. turns out all I needed was a s6 trailer to light a fire under my ass to finish this. and also I felt like I had to post it before Russell Lewis squashes my dreams on Sunday :-)
> 
> as such this fic ignores several (almost all) details about post s5 that have come out since then, most notably The Moustache Debacle (should that be The Morsestache??? i'm not even ready to talk about it yet anyway.) this fic begins literally about a minute after the last scene of the s5 finale.
> 
> title from glass in the park by alex turner.

 

“You can take me out to dinner first,” she decides. “Then... we’ll see. Least that way I can be sure you’ve eaten today.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Meet me here at eight.”

She doesn’t pose it as a question anymore, and he’s glad. If it was a question, he could change his mind about this, talk himself out of what he really wants like he always does. She’s telling him, and he’d follow any order if she’s the one giving it.

Unstoppable force meet immovable object.

“Okay.”

She cocks her head and smiles, then holds out her arm. “Walk me to work?”

He does. Her hand is warm in the crook of his arm, and the early morning chill pinches his cheeks.

They talk about the funeral, and the end of Cowley Station. She mentions her father in more positive terms than he’s heard from either father or daughter since she returned to Oxford. Joan says they’ll hear of Trewlove again before long when she’s made the first female Chief Constable in the force, and Morse agrees.

“This is me,” she says, when they reach the temporary offices she’s working in. She unfurls her hand from his arm and stands in front of him. “I guess I’ll see you tonight, then.”

“See you tonight,” he confirms.

Joan steps into his space and kisses his cheek. It’s just a brief, casual press of her lips yet still catches him off-guard.

“Don’t be late,” she warns, teasingly. He never would be, and she knows it. 

 

—

 

She opens the door at five to eight. Morse has already been outside ten minutes, checking his watch and combing down hair with his hand that didn’t want to stay in place.

She smiles at him brilliantly, before she turns to lock the door behind her. It robs him of air.

Joan quickly brushes down her short cream dress, the embellished collar reflecting gold specks on her cheeks.

He wants to tell her how beautiful she looks. The words fail in his throat.

“Shall we?” he says instead, offering her his arm this time.

She takes it. “We shall, Detective Sergeant Morse.”

 

  

—

  

 

They don’t end up having coffee, that night.

Joan extends the invitation to come up (again), but Morse declines. It feels strange to, since he was the one to ask this morning, what feels like years ago already. But it’s right. He wants to do this properly, like she deserves.

Her face falls just slightly at the unexpected answer, before she nods it away quickly.

“Not- this time,” he explains. He can’t bear to see her turn away, not again.

“‘This time’?” she wonders, lips turned back up, an eyebrow arched. She seems to understand what he means. “Someone’s confident.”

Morse looks down and scuffs his shoes on the pavement, trying not to smile and failing miserably.

She’s much closer when he glances up again, level with him only because she stands on her doorstep, and he’s caught in her eyes. Blue, a deep ridiculous blue.

Joan moves to straightens his tie idly, but leaves her hand on his chest, between their bodies over his heart. “Next time, then.”

He barely even needs to lean in—

“You’re not going to have an epiphany about some awful murder and run off again, are you?” she asks. She sounds half-serious.

Morse huffs a breathy laugh. As though anything but her has occupied his mind since he woke up this morning.

But he pretends to think about it. “I don’t think so.”

“Good,” she says, and she kisses him.

It’s gentle, and only a shade or two over chaste.  It sets him on fire anyway.

 

 

-

 

“You gonna tell me about this girl you’ve got on the go or what?”

Morse almost drops the bottle of milk he’s holding. He glances at Strange at the dining table behind him- he looks expectant, the newspaper he was previously engrossed in the sports pages of put aside.

“What makes you think I have a girl on the go?”

“You didn’t come in till late on Monday. And ever since you’ve been skipping around as happy as the Easter Bunny. So, what’s she like?”

Morse’s first instinct is feigning ignorance. Not even a week after burying their colleague, it seems badly timed to say the least.

“It’s early days, yet,” Morse says carefully, directing it at the kettle instead of Strange. It feels good to say it aloud, to let even a sliver of the thoughts rattling around in his head into the world. Makes it real, somehow. “We’re just seeing what happens.”

“And you don’t want to jinx it, I get it. Well, I’m happy for you, matey. After the last few weeks, we need all the happiness we can get around here.” Strange gets up and downs the rest of his coffee, leaving the mug by the sink. He pats Morse on the shoulder as he passes. “Hope it works out for you.”

“Me too,” Morse says to an empty room.

 

 

-

 

 

 The next time he sees her, he’s on her doorstep with a sodden handkerchief pressed to his bloody nose.

It hasn’t been a very good night, to say the least.

Her housemate (Sylvie, he learns later) looks at him suspiciously when she answers the door, not fully opening it, before calling for Joan. He’s not surprised. He’s not sure entirely why he’s here either.

His inspector told him to go home and he had the best intentions of doing so, but once he got into the fresh air his feet took him in the direction of Joan’s house without his approval or conscious direction.

There’s something about being around her, he supposes. He just knows, somehow, that he’ll feel better when he sees her.

She comes to the door in cotton pyjamas. Wisps of her dark hair falls out of her clip, framing her face.

(He was right.)

“Morse!”

“Hello,” he says. His split lip stings when he licks it.

“What happened?!”

“Someone- didn’t want to come quietly.”

Joan hops out onto the doorstep and practically drags him inside by his elbow. She pulls him down the hallway and into the kitchen, sitting him down at the table.

“Lucky for you, I just had my first aid training in work,” she says. “Pinch the bridge of your nose and lean forwards, I’ll get you some ice to bring the swelling down.”

He does as she asks and listens her to fluttering around him, pulling things out of cupboards and drawers. The chair next to him scrapes across the floor and then her fingertips draw his chin upwards.

“Let me see,” she tells him. “It’s stopped bleeding, at least. You just look like a dog’s dinner.”

The blunt words make him laugh. “Thanks.”

“You know what I mean!” Joan dips a cloth into the bowl of water next to her and dabs under his nose. It stings a little, but she’s gentle and he ends up just staring at her which is very distracting in itself.

“Sorry for turning up like this,” he says. “I probably should have just gone home.”

“Don’t be daft. I’m glad you did.” She eyes the dark smudge of blood on his pristine white collar disapprovingly. “What happened, anyway?”

“I was supervising the cells and a very drunk man… well, took issue with being arrested. He threw up on one of the constables right after he threw the punch- in that sense, I probably got off lightly.”

“Oh, they give you all the glamorous work at your new job, don’t they?” Morse rolls his eyes. She doesn’t know the half of it. “I’ll just put some E45 on your lip.”

She holds his chin in her hand and smoothes the cream on his lip with the pad of her thumb. He can’t remember the last time he had someone pore over his silly cuts and scrapes so intently.

“There. All done.” She meets his eyes, and smiles. Her hand still cups his cheek and Morse thinks about the last time she did it, outside a train station in the fog. He wonders if she remembers it like he does. “Try not to let anyone else punch that lovely face of yours in the next few weeks. Or ever again, for that matter.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

All of a sudden he feels so very tired, like he could fall asleep at her kitchen table like this with his head against her hand. And it’s for this reason he says: “I should go.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’ll be fine, it’s not far—”

“Morse, it’s almost half eleven— you’re not walking home now, looking like you just left a bar fight. You can stay here.” He moves to protest, to say something about imposing on her and her housemates. “Not taking no for an answer.”

Joan stares him down, pointed and absolutely irresistible. He lets her lead him up the stairs to her room. She disappears to the bathroom to hunt for a spare toothbrush and tells him to make himself comfortable.

Easier said than done.

Sleeping in his uniform isn’t an option, so he strips to his t-shirt and shorts and still feels odd about it. There’s something very intimate about being here -in a space that she’s made so fully her own-  so late at night that he doesn’t feel entitled to or worthy of.

Her room is a little cluttered, but not messy. It smells like her. There are books and records, little shiny trinkets and baubles on all the surfaces, photographs, postcards and ticket stubs almost completely filling a big noticeboard above her desk. The contrast between it and the manufactured pretence of happiness she’d tried to convince him of in that flat in Leamington is in stark relief.  A life that’s genuinely contented and full seeps out from everything he can see in here. He’s glad. She deserves it.

(He wants to think there might be a little space in here somewhere for him, too.)

He wants to know the whos, whats, whens and whys of it all. He wants to look at everything. He wants to ask her about the stories behind each one. It isn’t that he thinks she only exists when he’s around to perceive her, but there’s so much of her he knows nothing about that it’s almost overwhelming. It’s been a long time since she was just the face behind his DI’s door each morning.

“Toothbrush,” she says next to him, making him jump. She hands a new toothbrush to him. “Bathroom is the door in front of you straight down the hall.”

“Thanks,” he says.

(He sees another of her housemates on the corridor and smiles tightly. What must they think of all this, he wonders to himself. What do they even know about him, if anything?)

When he returns, she’s already in bed, sitting up with a book in her lap.

“I can sleep on the floor, if you’d like?” Morse offers. The teasing, levelling look she offers in return makes him feel a little silly for even suggesting it.

“Well, thank you for offering but I don’t seduce invalids.” She pats the bed next to her. “Your virtue is safe with me.”

It’s always been like this, really. He likes to think he sees things others miss, but she’s always two steps ahead of him— always dancing in front of him, just out of his reach.

Morse lies down, trying not to enter her space more than sharing a small double bed necessitates. One hand keeping her place in her book, Joan leans down and kisses him, gently. Morse wants to pull her down to him, broken skin on his lip be damned, and kiss her properly. Feel her skin on his.

One of these days, he will. It’s long overdue.

She smiles down at him, wispy escaped hair tickling his face.

“Goodnight, Morse.”

“Night.”

 

 

 

It’s still dark when Morse opens his eyes again, disoriented and half asleep. The bed is too soft to be his own, and the room smells sweet and light— nothing like the flat he and Strange share.

When he lifts his head to get his bearings, his lips brush soft dark hair.

Joan.

She’s curled into his side, hand resting on his chest protectively. One of her legs thrown between his, like she’s staking her claim on him. Morse isn’t sure if she’s aware already she did that a long time ago, that he couldn’t be any more _hers_ if her name was branded on his chest with hot irons.

Either way, he pulls the blankets up around her shoulders. He's slightly too tall for the bed so it exposes his feet to the cool air. It doesn't matter. 

**Author's Note:**

> you should know that this isn't really and truly a chaptered story (this could stand alone, probably) but this will _likely_ have one more chapter to get it to where I want it to be. I wanted to post in all in one go but I'm having a little trouble with the ending so have this part of the story first!
> 
> I've stared at this for so many hours I don't know how I feel about it anymore so let me know what you think??


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